


Tomorrow

by KiwiBerry



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiBerry/pseuds/KiwiBerry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories are a bitch when people keep stealing them from you.  </p>
<p>(A story in which James Buchanan Barnes tries to put all the pieces together)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to this post http://kaciart.tumblr.com/post/82540199747 for inspiring me to write this! Their art is fantastic and you should totally check it out!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!

When he first woke up, it was with a name ghosting his lips.

His face felt cold and small flakes of snow melted against his cheeks like how his mother used to caress his face when she kissed him goodnight. He tried to move but forgot how when his muscles screamed like a dense fog that flowed through his veins. He could see the sun somewhere above him, tucked away behind layers of white, and he tried to reach out, to grab the brightness he’d always loved, but he couldn’t. For some reason, his hand wouldn’t move. No. He couldn’t even feel it. He almost looked, almost felt his breath catch at the thought of what if, but, before he could, he heard something stir behind him and his eyes shot upwards and into the face of a man he could not recognize. 

“You’ve taken quite a fall, James. Why don’t I help you up?”

James. Was that him?

He almost accepted the offer but pain stopped him from doing so. He just sucked in a shaky breath, chest heavy like lead, and imagined his mother leading him to bed, tucking him in with her warm, slender hands. 

\-----------------------

The next time James-the name sounded wrong, but familiar somehow- awoke, he was in a chair and his body felt warm. His muscles tightened when he shifted, but his arms were strapped down, legs as well. He didn’t try to stand; there was no point. Besides, his head felt like it was shifting pieces around, trying to decide the correct placement for what was hoped to set and heal as quickly as it could. It was painful yet satisfying as images replayed in his head like a movie reel, faces coming back into view, and an echo of warmth spread through his chest.

But then he looked around and there were people surrounding him in crisp shirts and white jackets and they watched him as their hands moved deftly across keys and he screamed because his mind was losing it’s pieces; they were falling, falling, and he wasn’t quick enough to catch them. 

_“Hey. Stop crying, you big baby. Here.”_

_James watches as a young blond looks up at him, blue eyes brimming with tears that wrack bright, flushed cheeks. He hands the boy a band aid, which the kid only stares at. James can feel himself rolling his eyes, “I’ll do it for you, okay?”_

_The kid sniffs, sucking in a breath, and wipes at his eyes with a closed fist. James knows he’s smiling as he places the band aid over the kids scraped knee, blood running down his leg; just a scrape really but he doesn’t mention it._

_“There. All better. So stop crying, Stevie, alright? I’ll always take care of you. Promise.”_

When James opened his eyes he was crying, but he couldn’t remember why. 

\------------------------

It was in Russia that he had realized something was wrong. His body felt like quicksand and the gun he was holding felt slick in his grip. He tried evening his breathing, paying close attention to the rise and fall of his chest, and closed his eyes a moment before focusing them back on his target. It didn’t matter who it was. All that mattered was that the man was dead within the next five minutes. It was easy, natural, _familiar..._

_“Come on, Bucky! We’re gonna miss it.”_

James turned his head sharply, one hand releasing his gun and grabbing for the small knife on his thigh reflexively. But when he looked up, he was alone. He paused before storing the knife away and focusing back on the task at hand. His finger twitched on the trigger as the target switched rooms. 

_“Come on, Buck! The fireworks are about to start!”_

He heard laughing next but he didn’t turn. Stay on task, he reminded himself, complete the mission... 

_“Look, Bucky, look!”_

James heard the rebound of his shot as it flew through the air, crashing into the window with ease and breaking through flesh just as easily. The sound echoed in his ears, repeating itself again and again. He watched a small boy with his face pressed against a window flash across his sight, bright blue eyes skyward, and when he closed his eyes he swore he saw fireworks. 

\--------------------------

“Don’t lie to me!” 

He didn’t care what he was doing; what they were doing to him. He just wanted to know _why_. He wanted to know why he kept reliving moments he didn’t remember having and why he was seeing people drift in and out of his shadows. He wanted to know why he was here and what that _meant_. 

He just wanted answers to the questions nobody would let him ask. 

The man in front of him didn’t smile as he picked up one of the binders James had knocked off the desk in rage, metal arm having scraped against the wood like nails on a chalkboard. He simply opened it and turned it toward James. 

“You,” the man began, pointing toward a picture James didn’t remember posing for, smiling, “are a ghost; a man revived to help us make the world a better place. You are the future, James. And that is all that matters.”

James wanted to protest, to grab the man by the neck and shake him until he was blue in the face and not _fucking lying_ to him anymore. But before he could, he was grabbed by two men dressed in black and thrown back into the chair he’d come to welcome as his second home. 

“Wipe him.”

The phrase was familiar: a ritual that became just as normal as waking up each morning; starting anew. He smiled as the cool metal pressed against his face. Who was he kidding?

This _was_ his home. 

\--------------------------

Years later, in Pakistan, he would wake up in a cold sweat and he wouldn’t remember why he was there. But then they would come like gatling guns, the images and noises and words all directed towards him, and he’d gotten used to being fired at but those bullets would leave an altogether different wound. And he knew he’d revisit his home once more, his body alighting with the phantom pain yet to come. Because he was a ghost, a soldier, the future hope of mankind; and someone like that didn’t need a past. At least, not anymore. 

But that all changed when he meet the soldier known as Steve Rogers; the proclaimed savior of the world: Captain America. He almost laughed when they told him; the idea of a man hiding behind a country that couldn’t even fix the things it broke. But it didn’t matter what he thought; it only mattered how the bullet flew when it entered the man’s head. 

“Bucky?”

Something twisted inside James then, something raw and jagged, and he felt a heaviness build up behind his eyes but he didn’t show it. The name echoed in his head; he could feel it clinging to his lips, begging him to be said. He knew he should have left it alone. He knew he should have taken the opportunity to finish the mission before it got out of hand, but for some reason he couldn’t. So, instead, he asked the only question he could think of. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

He never did receive his answer. 

\--------------------------

“Wipe him.”

It was the same, always the same. Over and over like some game parents would play between each other, using their own child as a pawn to give them the upper hand; to lead them to victory. 

At some point, James would sit on the edge of his bed, staring at his right arm as he recounted a fair he couldn’t quite picture and some girl he didn’t know; a boy he half remembered. 

James would looked at his arm again and wonder if anyone could ever love a monster. 

\--------------------------

He should have known they’d send him again, to finish what he couldn’t the first time. His head felt empty when they gave him the orders, his throat raw when he eyed up his target once more, but it was the cold that seeped into his chest when those blue eyes looked into his that worried him the most. 

And then, unsurprisingly, everything was falling apart and James felt tired. His limbs were heavy and his head was pounding and he could taste blood in his mouth but he didn’t care. Maybe if he could kill the man shambling towards him, he could salvage a part of the mission; possibly even a part of himself. 

“You know me.”

The words made his blood boil, his mouth taste like iron. 

“No, I don’t!”

He felt his head on fire, flashes of faces coming and going, faster and faster. He swung because he was scared. He kicked because he didn’t understand. He was worried about what would came next; about what would come with knowing the truth. 

And yet, it still appeared:

“Your name...is James Buchanan Barnes.”

The name sent him swinging again, the truth too close and too soon. He wasn’t ready, he had never been ready. Every punch was a plea, a cry for help. _Please, just make it stop..._

He watched the target throw down his shield, vulnerable and waiting. 

“I’m not going to fight you.”

_Coward_. The man called him a friend but he only knew him as a mission; another faceless name to cross off the list. But as he threw his fear and frustration onto the other, watching his face swell and bruise, blood clot under his nose, he remembered a face bruised and bloodied, just the same, smiling at James as he pressed a damp cloth to his cheek.

_The boy bites down on his lip as James wipes the dried blood away, cradling the the other’s face with his free hand while he does so. It’s in those eyes, those deep, blue eyes, that James sees clarity and resolve; something he could possibly mistake for love…_

_“I’m with you ‘till the end of the line…”_

The words stopped something within James, but before he could figure out what, those blue eyes were falling away from him, faster and faster, disappearing beneath waves of green and blue. His arm ached as he held on, the metal straining to hold his weight. As the man he’d forgotten all those long years fell once more from his grasp he watched his own past fall with him, and let go. 

\--------------------------

He could hear the sirens as he walked, hair sticking to his face and body heavy, thick. He didn’t stop. He kept walking. And all the way he hoped to god someone had found Steve Rogers and let him live. 

\--------------------------

He wasn’t surprised when his face appeared on the news. He knew people were looking for him, good or bad, if there even was a distinction between such titles anymore. So, he found an empty apartment, stole some clothes from a small second hand shop a block away, and started to answer his own questions. 

He started with a museum of sorts, a memorial they called it, and he stared at his own face smiling and laughing on a screen, surrounded by faces he couldn’t remember, comrades he’d once trusted with his life. And each time Steve was always there, placing a hand on his shoulder to hold him back, giving a gentle shove to tease him, displaying a warm smile that assured him he’d done well. He watched himself receive all of this and yet he felt nothing; the ghost of a love he couldn’t remember. 

He was walking the streets, hat pulled low and shoulders hunched, when he sorted through his mind once more, trying to pick up the pieces he’d been throwing away for so long; trying to fix something, anything. It turned out a layering of years made a habit hard to quit. But a familiar smudge of blond hair in a coffee shop made something in him stir, something click into place, and when those blue eyes looked up at him with surprise and compassion, he knew that that, that moment, was the starting point he’d been looking for. 

Bucky didn’t remember much that day, but sitting there with Steve, his best friend, his family, he did remember one thing: he remembered what home felt like.


End file.
